Harris Campaign Official’s Take On Her Defeat Comes Out Of Left Field

Kamala Harris’ deputy campaign manager wasn’t playing when he said that sports contributed to her loss to Donald Trump.

In an interview with Semafor published Monday, Rob Flaherty said the campaign’s urgency to introduce Harris to sports fans who aren’t political junkies swung and missed.

Some of sports’ biggest shows politely rejected efforts to book the Democratic nominee for some much-needed exposure, he told the outlet.

“Sports and culture have sort of merged together, and as sports and culture became more publicly and sort of natively associated with this Trump-conservative set of values, it got more complicated for athletes to come out in favor of us,” he said. “It got more complicated for sports personalities to take us on their shows because they didn’t want to ‘do politics.’”

Flaherty tied in the campaign’s sports dilemma to the general problem of reaching prominent influencers willing to give Harris a platform. (Her struggles with media engagement have been a hot topic.)

“When it’s not cool to talk about politics, you’re kind of afraid of the audience,” he added.

In what could have been an impactful interview, a spot in the works on Joe Rogan’s mega-popular podcast never came to pass just before the election. Rogan said Harris’ team asked him to avoid questions about her stance on marijuana. (Trump did appear on Rogan’s program and got an election-eve endorsement from him.)

Now top aides for the vice president are debating her potential next move ― to reportedly try another presidential run in 2028 or run for governor in California in 2026.

“She’d need to essentially declare right away.” CNN reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere said.

If Harris does indeed run, at least she might have a spot on Hall of Fame tight end Shannon Sharpe’s podcast. That was one of her few sports crossover appearances in the runup to the 2024 election and it was viewed by more than 1.6 million people.